Our New Culture of Life

By Emma Foley

I lived for the annual 6 A.M. bus ride. Absolutely lived for it.

It wasn’t exactly comfortable. In between bites of a soggy Wawa chicken salad hoagie on the sixth floor of a parking garage, I packed on layer upon layer and stuck HotHands wherever space would allow. Some years, no amount of clothing could have kept my toes from going numb by the time my parish, class, or college reached the Supreme Court. In January 2019, I grew far too familiar with a seatbelt buckle receptor during an overnight bus trip from Boston.

It was a game seeing which news outlets would have trucks along Constitution Avenue. EWTN was old reliable. Sometimes Fox would make an appearance, but beyond that, mainstream coverage was scant if existent, and never particularly positive.

“They didn’t even point the camera on the real crowd!” my friends and I would vent after Googling what videos did exist on the Internet.

Sure, it wasn’t comfortable, and it didn’t earn attention. But when an unruly January Friday would inhibit my parish, class, or college from making the trip to the annual March for Life in Washington, D.C., the thought of waiting another 51 weeks felt unbearable.

Every year I pondered over it. I eagerly anticipated an event that was inherently sad. I hungered for a justice I, like most attendees, did not believe would be satiated in our lifetime. “Roe v. Wade has got to go,” I chanted alongside my high school peers each year. I didn’t believe it ever would.

My Crayola marker posters promised hope for the little guy, but in all honesty, I had none.

“One day, we’ll march in celebration,” the ProLife head honchos would assure the sea of winter hats across the National Mall over the loudspeaker.

Not in my lifetime. I simply didn’t believe it. And sometimes, I was convinced, neither did they.

So why did I prepare for the fourth Friday of each year like a kid on Christmas Eve? If my heart was void of hope, if every demonstration, prayer, or protest was futile, why was I even involved?

There was something about the March for Life. There’s a term out there: a “thin place,” where the boundary between Heaven and earth, between the Divine and His creation, feels—if not is—especially minimal.

It was absent of anger, almost unfathomably so. Like myself, most in attendance held the dignity of the unborn baby as their bedrock issue. For 49 years, we lived under case law suggesting the Creator endowed us the right to destroy. For 49 years, we gave credence to a disposability of the most vulnerable, the voiceless.

For 49 years, we lived in a nation that turned her head from the plight of the unplanned pregnancy, that curbed crisis with convenience, and that claimed the conversation on personhood was closed.

We could have been angry. It would have been justified. But each January when I returned to D.C., I found that no one was. Ever.

It was an irrational event. Thousands upon thousands journeyed to the capital knowing they may never see Jericho fall. Yet they had faith that God still held America in His hands. When my faith in my country faltered, I clutched onto theirs.

The March for Life was my favorite day of the year, and it’ll never happen again—not in the same way nor under the same circumstances. It sounds backwards, yes, but I am one of millions who couldn’t be more ecstatic.

Behind the scenes, the struggle was long—of course, it was half a decade. Some marched on Washington, others in their home state. Some prayed in church or outside a clinic. Some fought the cautious legal fight; others, the political battle. Families argued; friendships ended. Some were cancelled; others, arrested.

But as if I had turned my head for a moment, it all happened so fast. The President of the United States, the leader of the free world, began acknowledging the March for Life—a protest on the current law of the land. Attendance grew. The movement gained coverage like never before.

A promising majority was appointed to the Supreme Court. The murmur of possibility in presenting a new case began to crop up across ProLife circles. I found myself checking the Friday decision docket to see if Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization opinion was released. It could happen, I tried to convince myself, still embarrassingly acclimated to disappointment.

Then it did happen. One year ago, Roe v. Wade was overturned. Declared bad case law, the deadly decision was undone.

Today, we celebrate that our nation, despite a flawed and fallen people, can declare victory over a legal—and, more crucially, moral—error. Our living document can contribute to squashing a Culture of Death.

We are not finished. On that day one year ago, a single battle became fifty. The journey to make abortion unprofitable, unfashionable, and unthinkable would be fifty times more complex.

But I have faith. One year ago, an evil was undone. The Supreme Court uncuffed our hands and gave back the keys to the conversation. Rather quickly, thirteen battles were won in state legislatures and governor’s offices across America. More were fought ways impossible for a half-century.

America can be a nation where an unborn baby holds dignity in every state. Our culture can be one where a mother in crisis can turn to her priest or public servant and be promised charity, not convenience.

The uphill battle I once thought to be unbelievable was won one year ago. Thirty-seven more or even thirty-seven thousand more battles, it can be done. If you lack faith, clutch onto mine.

Emma Foley is the Digital Managing Editor for the Howie Carr Radio Network. She grew up in Pennsylvania, but after graduating from Boston College, she decided to make Massachusetts her new home.